Drafting and Sketching

Draft tutorial (v0.19) This is a basic introduction to the tools of the Draft Workbench: working plane, grid, line, arc, upgrade, rectangle, circle, polygon, arrays, dimensions, annotations, and shapestring.

Sketcher reference (v0.18) This is a 70-page long PDF document that serves as a detailed manual for the Sketcher Workbench. It explains the basics of Sketcher usage, and goes into a lot of detail about the creation of geometrical shapes, and each of the constraints.

Technical Drawings

Basic TechDraw Tutorial (v0.17) This is the essential introduction to the tools of the TechDraw Workbench: page, view, scale, vertical and horizontal dimensions, annotations, projection groups, linking dimensions to the 3D view.

Creating a new background template (v0.17) Instructions to create a page template in Inkscape for using it with the TechDraw Workbench. Determine the size of the sheet, draw a frame for the page, define fixed text, and editable text fields.

FEM

CalculiX cantilever FEM analysis (v0.17) This in an example included in every installation of FreeCAD; it demonstrates a basic analysis with the CalculiX FE solver. Purge the current result, re-run the solver, and view the displacements and stresses in the deformed mesh in the viewport.

Simple FEM introduction (v0.17) This is a short introduction to the steps required to perform an analysis in the FEM Workbench: model your object, create a mesh, add constraints and forces, add a material, run the solver, and visualize the results.

FEM shear analysis of a composite block (v0.17) Study the deformation of a block made of a hard nucleus surrounded by a softer material: create mesh regions, add materials, set up sliding constraints, add shear loads, run the solver, and visualize the results with a clip plane.

CNC & 3D Printing

Path Workbench for the impatientThis is a quick presentation of the workflow for the Path Workbench: create a job, define the output, define the milling tool, define the path operations, start the simulation, and generate a G-code output file.

Preparing models for 3D printing (v0.16)Convert a solid object to a mesh object using the Mesh Workbench, export the mesh to STL format, and use Slic3r to prepare the G-code. Alternatively use the Cura Workbench or the Path Workbench to generate the G-code.

Import and Export

DXF importer installationInstall the DXF importer program in you system, so that you can open DXF and DWG files with FreeCAD.

Rendering

Creating renderingsQuickly produce a rendered image of your bodies with POV-Ray and LuxRender, if they are installed in your system.

Raytracing tutorial (v0.16) Describes the basic workflow of the Raytracing Workbench using POV-Ray or LuxRender: set the path to the renderers, create a project, set the camera position, select the model, run the renderer.

Intermediate FreeCAD and POV-ray tutorial (v0.18) Workflow to produce a better render with POV-Ray: create a project, add objects, set the camera, save the .pov file, manually edit the file to improve the textures, planes, lights, and then run the renderer.

Rendering a FreeCAD assembly with Blender (v0.18) Export bodies from FreeCAD to Wavefront .obj, import the file into Blender, set up a simple Sun light, assign basic materials with the Principled BSDF shader, and produce a rendered image with EEVEE and Cycles.

Robot workbench

Robot tutorial (v0.17) Simulate the movement of an industrial robot: set up a trajectory, set up home position, change the robot position, insert various waypoints, and simulate the robot movement.

Multiaxes plotDraw a more complicated plot in the Plot Workbench with two different input lists (X, T), and three output lists (Y1, Y2, Y3), then create two sets of axes in the same plot, and plot the pairs of lists (Y1 against X, and Y2 and Y3 against T); set the axes labels and grid, and move the legends and title.

Scripting

These are tutorials that are related to scripting or programming. They are geared towards more experienced users, who are already somewhat familiar with the program.